CPU, Mobo and GFX upgrade advice

[wedge22]

Ok guys my friend wants to upgrade these 3 items as he currently has a 3.2 Ghz P4 skt 478, Asus P4C800 and a 9800 Pro. He wants to spend £350 on the new items and they need to be able to perform better than his current setup whilst gaming. I came up with these items,

HIS Excalibur ATI Radeon X800 GTO ICEQII TURBO 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (RX800GTO-256ICEQT) (GX-044-HT)
£114.95 £114.95
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Venice 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3500BPBOX) (CP-119-AM)
£129.95 £129.95
Epox EP-9NPA+ nForce4 (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-030-EP)
£59.95 £59.95

[shaithis]

Doesn't look like much of an upgrade for the money to me.....

Maybe throw a little more at the gfx card?

[wedge22]

Well maybe he should keep the mobo and cpu and just get a much better gfx card then?

[ajones]

How much RAM has he got? If you're not intending to blow anything on cpu/mobo, maybe upping to 2GB RAM as well as a spanky new gfx card is the way to go.

[kushtibari]

The only problem about throwing money at the graphics is that its an AGP setup. Sooner or later you're mates going to have to shift to PCI Express before his current stuff goes down in value, so I don't think its a bad set of choices. I might go with an Opteron though, just for the 1mb cache, a 146 with the 10x multi is still cheaper than the 3500. His old stuff is still worth a bit of cash - is the £350 including the sale of what he's got? If not he could probably up the graphics a bit.

[wedge22]

Well I have managed to get more money out of him and it looks like he is going to get a S939 3500, Gigabyte K8NF-9 nForce4 mobo, Akasa 400w PSU and a HiS X800GTO